The everlasting man

In these final days of this year, I decided to reread this monumental work by Chesterton. I was not disappointed: the description of paganism before Christ and the subsequent definition of Christianity against various heresies is still fascinating.

This year I read 26 books by Chesterton: not bad, but I am not halfway through his writings. Looking at the list, I do realize that my favorites are mainly Chesterton's more famous works: Orthodoxy, The man who was thursday, The everlasting man, St Francis and St Thomas. I loved his essays, though I could not read them all too fast. About traveling I only read his impressions of America, which were very interesting. I read quite some of his novels, which were unvarying in their being intriguing. The detective stories were good and entertaining. The discussions about persons (Dickens, Tolstoj, etc) sometimes depended on my knowledge of the subject.
What I missed this year falls mainly in two categories; poetry is the first. I did read Greybeards and the famous poem about the donkey, but I did not start The ballad of the white horse. The other is Chesterton's discussion about Catholicism. I had hoped to find a copy of The thing, but in the end I could not find it. I am still not completely sure about Chesterton's catholicism. It is true that protestant churches in his time were tainted by higher bible criticism and that the Catholic church presents a continuity in thinking over two thousand years, but there are more considerations then these.

At the end of this year I do find myself richer than before: Chesterton really provokes thought. I hear myself quoting Chesterton, or telling people that Chesterton thought so-and-so, or recommending people to read some works by Chesterton. A memorable author if ever there was one.

What I saw in America

I loved the first chapter of this book, where Chesterton discusses his experiences at the American consulate. Later observations are also recognizable, for example Chesterton's discussion about the difference in humor between the US and England.
The main idea from this book seems to be that it is okay to laugh about foreign things, as long as you do not assume that those things are foolish as well as foreign.

For in this matter the human mind is the victim of a curious little unconscious trick, the cause of nearly all international dislikes. A man treats his own faults as original sin and supposes them scattered everywhere with the seed of Adam. He supposes that men have then added their own foreign vices to the solid and simple foundation of his own private vices. It would astound him to realize that they have actually, by their strange erratic path, avoided his vices as well as his virtues. His own faults are things with which he is so much at home that he at once forgets and assumes them abroad. He is so faintly conscious of them in himself that he is not even conscious of the absence of them in other people. He assumes that they are there so that he does not see that they are not there. 

The American consulate

I just started 'What I saw in America', and I am still laughing at Chesterton's description of the forms he had to fill out at the American consulate to get his papers. Some things have not changed in a hundred years.

On of the questions on the paper was, 'Are you an anarchist?' To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, 'What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?' along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an 'arche'. Then there was the question, 'Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force?' Against this I should write, 'I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.' The inquisitor, in his more that morbid curiosity, had then written down, 'Are you a polygamist?' The answer to this is, 'No such luck' or 'Not such a fool,' according to our experience of the other sex. [-]

But among many things that  amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, 'I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.' Or 'I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity.' Or again, 'Yes, I am a polygamist all right and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.' There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies. [-]

Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies.

 Chesterton continues to compare this with his experiences in the Middle East:

These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. 

After pages and pages of hilarity, Chesterton then finally comes to a deeper analysis on why America asks these questions. His argument is quite interesting: he says that America is the only nation in the world that is 'founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.'

The crimes of England

This has been the sole book by Chesterton which seemed to be outdated. This may be merely my perception, because of a lack of knowledge of nineteenth-century English history. Still, there were some interesting ideas in this book, written in 'The Great War'.

Pan-Germanism

Chesterton allegorizes the nature of Pan-Germanism as follows:

The horse asserts that all other creatures are morally bound to sacrifice their interests to his, on the specific ground that he possesses all noble and necessary qualities, and is an end in himself. It is pointed out in an answer that when climbing a tree the horse is less graceful than the cat; that lovers and poets seldom urge the horse to make a noise all night like the nightingale; that when submerged for some time under water, he is less happy than the haddock; and that when he is cut open pearls are less often found in him than in an oyster.  He is not content to answer (though, being a muddle-headed horse, he does use this answer also) that having an undivided hoof is more than pearls or oceans or all ascension of song. He reflects for a few years on the subject of cats;  and at last discovers in the cat "the characteristic equine equality of caudality, or a tail"; so that cats are horses, and wave on every tree-top the tale which is the equine banner. Nightingales are found to have legs, which explains their power of song. Haddocks are vertebrates; and therefore are sea-horses. And though the oyster outwardly presents dissimilarities which seem to divide him from the horse, he is by the all-filling nature-might of the same horse-moving energy sustained.

Now this horse is intellectually the wrong horse. It is not perhaps going too far to say that this horse is a donkey. For it is obviously within even the intellectual resources of a haddock to answer to answer, "But if a haddock is a horse, why should I yield to you any more than you to me? Why should that singing horse commonly called the nightingale, or that climbing horse hitherto known as the cat, fall down and worship you because of your horsehood? If all our native faculties are the accomplishments of a horse - why then are you only another horse without any accomplishments." When thus gently reasoned with, the horse flings up his heels, kicks the cat, crushes the oyster, eats the haddock and pursues the nightingale, and that is how the war began.

And Chesterton concludes: "if Teutonism is used for comprehension it cannot be used for conquest."
From 'The crimes of England', Chapter VIII

 

Germany and England

Chesterton's book 'The crimes of England' seems to principally deal with the relation between England and Germany (which is not surprising, as the book was written in the 'Great War'). The book is difficult to follow for someone like me, whose English and German history of ages prior to 1900 is quite shaky.
An interesting point that recurs every now and then is a certain perception of German thought. In chapter VI, for example, Chesterton names the one 'classic and perfect literary product that ever came out of Germany'; he means 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'. He compares this with later German writings:

I am all for German fantasy, but I will resist German earnestness till I die. I am all for Grimm's Fairy Tales; but if there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, I would break it, if I knew what it was. [-]

The Germans cannot really be deep because they will not consent to be superficial. They are bewitched by art, and stare at it, and cannot see round it. They will not believe that art is a light and slight thing - a feather, even if it be from an angelic wing. 

Eugenics and other evils

This was a very interesting book to read, especially since it was written almost a century ago (in the time before WOII, when one could still openly be a eugenist). Chesterton spends quite some time explaining how eugenics is related to both capitalism and socialism; I was reminded of his analyses in the end of 'What's wrong with the world'.

Eugenics, socialism and capitalism

In part II of 'Eugenics and other evils', Chesterton analyzes the reasons for the move towards Eugenics in his time. Socialism, and the desire that the government control the health of its subjects, is one influence. Capitalism, though, is also guilty: "That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist industrialism being sacrificed to any other object.' Similar to other arguments in other books, Chesterton shows how we tend to forget what should be our primary focus (such as normal people and families) and treat modern and fleeting institutions as permanent. Chesterton uses one example to make his point clear (from chapter V):

To this [a specific paper] a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter "Hopeful". [-] The curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared,are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the parents doe not want to have them. He means that the employers do not want to pay them properly.

Reading this, I think of the character of 'tiny Tim', from Dickens' 'Christmas Carol'...

Science

From 'Eugenics and other evils', chapter VII:

The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that is really levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen - that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination, in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But is seems quite natural to our politicians to enforce vaccinations; and it would seem to them madness to enforce baptism. 

I am not frightened of the word "persecution" when it is attributed to the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof - then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are.

 I have to say that I do not agree with Chesterton completely; I do tend to trust specialists, and I do not necessarily believe the common man with his common sense will have the right view of scientific theories. But it is good to realize that the scientific worldview (even in a specific area) is not as immovable as some popular writers tend to express.